Information provided in the compartment of a vehicle is various. Examples of the information include vehicle speed, engine rotational speed, shift position, fuel, and water temperature indicative of the state of the vehicle. Other examples include a map for navigation, setting information of an air conditioner, and audio information. In recent years, a night view for driving assistance, information of a portable terminal carried in the vehicle, and the like are also provided.
Various display devices for providing the information such as a head-up display and a liquid crystal display displaying a map for navigation and the like come to be mounted. Some meter panels displaying vehicle speed and the like can provide various information by employing liquid crystal or the like and can be said as a king of display devices.
Since the number of pieces of information (hereinbelow, called “contents”) provided is increasing and a plurality of display devices are mounted as described above, it becomes important to determine which content, and which region (hereinbelow, called “area”) in which display device.
Conventionally, a technique of assigning a plurality of pieces of screen data generated by a portable terminal to a single display is disclosed (for example, refer to patent literature 1). In the technique, priority is assigned to screen data and display regions, and a region is determined in priority order.
However, a display area displaying a content has to be determined in view of the whole, and a combination made in descending order of priority as described in the patent literature 1 is not always the optimum combination.
For example, it is assumed that, in the case where there are two contents X and Y and two areas “a” and “b”, when they are combined in priority order, pairs of “X-a” and “Y-b” are made. Even when the combination “X-a” is a combination of elements having high priority and is optimum, there is fear that the combination “Y-b” becomes inappropriate. Therefore, although the combination “X-b” is not optimum, there is the possibility that the combinations “X-b” and “Y-a” are more appropriate.